


mistaken for strangers

by jaekyu



Category: Monsta X (Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, M/M, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 21:22:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7773865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yoongi and Kihyun grew up in houses on the same cul-de-sac.</p><p>A love story told through a series of summers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mistaken for strangers

**Author's Note:**

> alternative title for this fic is "do you remember summer '09, wanna go back there every night." 
> 
> another one for shelby? damn.

summer arrives with a length of lights  
summer blows away and quietly gets swallowed by a wave  
(THE DECEMBERISTS)

My memory loves you; it asks about you all the time.  
(JONATHAN CARROLL)

 

 

 

 **0.**

If you were to ask Min Yoongi to describe Yoo Kihyun to you he would not know what to say. 

And if you knew Yoongi well enough you would ask him _wasn’t he your best friend_ and Yoongi would say “he was,” and then he would say, “but that was a long time ago.” 

Maybe he would manage tell you about how Kihyun was short, like him, and how his eyes wrinkled at the corners when Yoongi managed to make him really smile. How his house was bigger than Yoongi’s, with a front door painted forest green and how his bedroom window faced the front yard when Yoongi’s faced the back. Yoongi will only remember things about Kihyun in relation to himself. He won’t remember what colour Kihyun’s eyes are or the way his voice sounded or the texture of his hair. 

And that will make Yoongi feel bad, it’ll eat him up a bit inside, but the reason he remembers so little is because he’s carved enough of Kihyun out of his mind and heart and lungs that one of the only defining features Yoongi remembers of him still is this:

He was in love with him.

 

 

**1.**

They grew up in a small suburb on a street that had a cul-de-sac. A street that ended semi-abruptly in a slow turn, a curve with a handful of houses built along it. Yoongi’s house stood to the left of it, Kihyun’s to the right and in the right light at the right time of day the shadows of their houses would blend together across the pavement.

Back then there was a tree in Yoongi’s front yard. It bore no fruit or significant plant life and it wasn’t sturdy enough for climbing. The grass beneath it was soft, though, and it’s perimeter was always shaded. 

Yoongi’s early memories of Kihyun are always in the shade of that three. They’d untie their shoes and eat slices of apples someone's mother had cut and sprinkled sugar on. Kihyun would slip his shoes off when he was done and dart into the street, bare feet against rough pavement. 

Yoongi would follow. The pavement would always burn the soles of his feet but he’d follow Kihyun anyway. He’d follow Kihyun anywhere.

Maybe that’s a metaphor.

 

 

**2.**

Before we go any further we should let you know: there are plenty of good love stories out there. This is not one of them. 

 

 

**3.**

The heat of the summer can be unbearable. Yoongi has never liked it. 

Never liked the windless heat or the sort of wet and heavy heat that replaces it after the rain. He’s never liked the way ice cream feels melted between your fingers, the muck of murky lakes or the smell of chlorine. 

Kihyun loves it, down to every last bug and sunburn. 

Kihyun’s father sets up a sprinkler in the backyard and they sit just under the outermost perimeter of it’s spray, a cool mist fanning over them every once and awhile. Kihyun rubs his bare feet against the wet grass and sighs contentedly. 

They are ten and nine and they are best friends. 

“I hate the summer,” Yoongi says. He pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around his legs. 

“What,” Kihyun sputters, turning to face Yoongi and tipping his head quizzically. “Why? It’s the best.” 

Yoongi wrinkles his nose in disgust. “It’s not. There’s too many bugs and it’s too hot and I hate wearing shorts and t-shirts. They’re ugly.” 

Kihyun huffs, “well, summer is my favourite.” 

“Gross,” Yoongi shivers slightly as the sprinkler washes that mist of water over them briefly, “why?”

“Because,” Kihyun starts. He lays himself down against the grass, arms crossed behind his head, “I don’t know. I like the bugs, fireflies are cool. And I don’t ever think it’s too hot. I don’t have to wear shoes, I hate shoes, and you can go swimming and eat popsicles and also there’s no school, which means I can hang out with you more.” 

Yoongi shrugs, unconvinced, “I guess.” 

“Also I don’t think you look ugly in shorts and t-shirts,” Kihyun continues, “you get all kinds of freckles in the summer, my mom says it’s from being in the sun all the time. I like it.”

 

 

**4.**

“That boy,” Yoongi’s mother had said once, watching Kihyun leave their house after Yoongi had invited him over for dinner. It was summer, it was always summer, and the evening was shoving the sun down past the tree line. “Was born during the coldest winter I can remember. It’s no wonder he loves the heat.” 

 

 

 **5.**

The summer Yoongi is fourteen, Kihyun trailing behind with his winter birthday at thirteen, they set up a rope swing around one of the sturdiest branches on one of the biggest trees in Kihyun’s backyard.

They don’t ask their parents if they can. Kihyun insists it’s fine, that Yoongi did a year and a half of boy scouts so he must know how to tie good knots, but the whole thing makes Yoongi a little nervous. He doesn’t say anything, though. They are preteen boys and that small anxious part of Yoongi is pushed away by the larger part of him that feels invincible. 

The rope stays sturdy for an hour. Sometime after that, it rope snaps and with it so do the bones in Kihyun’s leg in three places. Yoongi never feels more helpless than he does watching Kihyun cry, laying in the middle of his yard with his leg bent all grotesque. 

Kihyun goes to the hospital, he gets a cast and pins in his leg. He lets Yoongi draw all over it. 

“This is stupid,” Kihyun pouts, still high on morphine from the hospital visit but now laying in his own bed, “I’m going to be stuck inside doing nothing all summer.” 

Guilt gnaws at Yoongi’s stomach lining, making him feel like he wants to throw up. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. 

“Why are you saying sorry?” Kihyun counters, “it was my stupid idea.”

“Yeah, but,” Yoongi rubs at his leaking nose, trying hard not to cry, “my mom says I need to - I need to _be a good example_ for you. ‘Cause I’m older.” 

Kihyun huffs, “by eight months.” He shuffles over in his bed, then, careful with his injured leg. “If you feel that bad, though, I guess you can make it better by staying inside with me all summer and watching movies.” He pats the newly empty spot on his mattress.

Yoongi climbs onto Kihyun’s bed beside him and says, “okay,” 

 

 

**6.**

“You’re gonna have a cool scar,” Yoongi tells Kihyun, a week before the cast comes off for good. 

These days Kihyun’s a little stir-crazy. It’s late August and he wants to go the community pool, finally, for the first time in the summer before it closes until next year. 

“You think so?” Kihyun asks, watching Yoongi scrawl _Kihyun smells_ in one of the only spots untouched by ink on the part of the cast that comes up near his thigh. 

“I know so,” Yoongi underlines his handy work, caps his sharpie, “we can tell everyone at school you got into a fight.” 

Kihyun laughs. Yoongi laughs with him.

This is the summer Yoongi falls in love with Kihyun. He doesn’t know it yet. 

But he will soon.

 

 

**7.**

After they start high school, summers become less about trips to the park and exploring the woods behind their houses and more about video games late into the night, waking up past noon, spending all their pocket change on snacks and going to the community pool to watch girls strut around in bikinis. 

Yoongi’s not really sure if they do that last one because they want too or if they do it because they feel like they have too. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Kihyun likes swimming. Yoongi still doesn’t quite like the way chlorine feels against his skin but he goes in anyway.

They walk home dripping wet, towels wrapped around their shoulders and the sun turning the sky shades of pink and orange.

“Hey,” Yoongi says, knocking Kihyun’s shoulder with his, “wanna come over and watch Evil Dead?” 

Kihyun wrinkles his nose, “you know I hate that movie.”

“Whatever,” Yoongi rolls his eyes, “it’s a great movie and you always fall asleep anyway.” 

“Will you buy me pizza?” Kihyun bats his eyelashes. Yoongi sighs, a little dramatically, and agrees. 

That night, true to Yoongi’s words, Kihyun eats three slices of pepperoni and cheese and passes out before even the second act of Evil Dead. It’s hot in Yoongi’s upstairs bedroom, even at midnight with the windows open, and it’s made even worse when Kihyun falls asleep with his head in Yoongi’s lap. Yoongi doesn’t have the heart to move him.

It’s the summer he is fifteen and Yoongi finally finds a name for the way he feels about Kihyun.

 

 

**8.**

Being in love with Kihyun, knowing he’s in love with Kihyun, having a name for the constellations he sees in Kihyun’s eyes - it doesn’t feel new, or weird, or fleeting. 

And that’s scary. It scares the shit out of Yoongi.

 

 

**9.**

Kihyun lays in the dark of Yoongi’s room, 1AM on a day in July when Yoongi is sixteen and says, “I think I’m gay.” 

Yoongi’s heart seems to split in a half and drop into his ankles and lodge itself into his throat, pulls him in two different directions. He wracks his mind for something to say but all he manages is, “oh.” 

“Is that -” Kihyun sounds afraid. Even more afraid than when he broke his leg in three places. “Is that weird? Is it gonna make things weird between us?” 

_It will,_ Yoongi thinks, _it will because I’m in love with you and I don’t think you love me back. I wish you would. I think you could if you tried hard enough. Will you try hard enough?_

Yoongi doesn’t say anything of that. Instead he says, “no,” and then he blurts, “I’m bi,” 

“Oh,” Kihyun replies and it seems to sit heavy in the darkness of Yoongi’s room. 

 

 

**10.**

In the fall Yoongi meets a girl at a party named Soojung, she is pretty and a little harsh around the edges but that makes her interesting. They date for six months. Five months down the road Yoongi loses his virginity to her. 

“You what?” Kihyun’s mouth goes slack when Yoongi tells him.

“We had sex,” Yoongi repeats, as nonchalant as he can be when he feels this nervous about telling Kihyun.

“Oh my god,” Kihyun mutters. When Yoongi turns to look at him, he’s smirking lewdly. 

If Yoongi were to tell you he wasn’t expecting - hoping - for some hurt to bleed through Kihyun he would be lying. That makes him feel bad. Maybe he’s a bad friend.

A month later Soojung breaks up with him. “I always feel like you're somewhere else, Yoongi,” she tells him.

Yoongi tries to miss her harder than he does.

 

 

**11.**

The summer he is seventeen is Yoongi least favourite summer in years. The heat breaks records. It’s so bad Yoongi takes to sleeping exclusively in the coolness of the downstairs living room. The heat also means Yoongi and Kihyun are always at the pool, too, and Yoongi finds a reason to hate it for more than just the chlorine.

The summer Yoongi is seventeen is the summer Kihyun meets Shin Hoseok. 

Hoseok is a lifeguard at the pool for the summer, all exposed arm and back muscles and a tousled mess of dark hair. He’s a year older than Yoongi and Kihyun and maybe that’s part of his appeal. He’s handsome too, at least Kihyun seems to think so.

Hoseok works at the pool a whole week before Kihyun confesses to Yoongi that he has a crush on him.

“Do you think I’m hot?” Kihyun asks Yoongi late at night, melted into his couch from the heat and from the two beers they lifted from Yoongi’s dad and then split between them. 

_I think you're gorgeous_ almost rolls right off Yoongi’s tongue. He holds it back, though, shakes his head to clear it. “That’s a weird question.” 

“Hoseok’s really hot,” Kihyun muses. Yoongi tries not to groan at the mention of the name. “I don’t think he’ll like me back unless I’m hot too.” 

Yoongi rolls his eyes, “if he doesn’t like you the way you are then fuck him.” 

“I’m trying,” Kihyun mumbles.

Yoongi elbows him in the ribs, “shut up.”

 

 

**12.**

Kihyun takes Yoongi to a bonfire on the other side of their neighborhood, down a sharp hill to a clearing a few feet from a lake and surrounded by thick trees. 

“Remind me why we’re going to this thing again?” Yoongi asks, stumbling a little as they try to descend from the hill. 

“Booze, weed,” Kihyun shrugs, “also Minhyuk invited me and he said he invited Hoseok too.”

It’s too dark to see but Yoongi knows Kihyun is blushing. “Ah, the truth comes out,” he says.

Yoongi would rather be home watching gross horror movies and splitting a bag of chips with Kihyun but there is booze, as promised, so at least he has that. Someone has brought two cases of cheap canned beer but none of them are legal so it’s hard to complain. The beer bubbles over the lip of the can when Yoongi cracks his open. 

Kihyun spots Hoseok not ten minutes after they arrive. He sits across the clearing from them, in a big hoodie and khaki shorts, even more tan looking in the low light of the burning fire. Kihyun tries to make it a point not to stare and mostly fails. Yoongi watches the embers in the fire dim and brighten every so often.

“What do I do if he comes over?” Kihyun asks, wringing his hands. 

Yoongi sips his warm beer and winces, “I don’t know. Bat your eyelashes at him, that always works with me.” It’s dangerously close to a confession but it’s not one and Kihyun doesn’t pick up on the hidden tone in Yoongi’s words. “I need to piss.” 

Yoongi stands from the bench he had been sharing with Kihyun to find a good, unlit tree to pee against. Kihyun catches his wrist. “Don’t leave me,” 

“I’m about to piss my pants,” Yoongi wrenches his wrist free, “you’ll be fine.”

 

 

**13.**

When Yoongi returns - and it’s only been five minutes, it only took five minutes, five whole minutes, Yoongi told Kihyun he would be fine - Hoseok has taken the spot Yoongi was occupying beside Kihyun. 

Their heads are leaned so close and Kihyun is smiling, a kind of smile he reserves for Yoongi but softer at the edges. Hoseok’s knee knocks against Kihyun’s thigh.

Yoongi turns around and doesn’t look back.

 

 

**14.**

“Where did you go last night?” It’s Kihyun, waking Yoongi up at 10 AM by walking right into his bedroom. He doesn’t even knock on the front door anymore, hasn’t knocked since they were kids. “You were my ride home.” 

Yoongi groans. Kihyun sits on the edge of his bed and pulls the covers off of him. Yoongi manages to grab an edge and pull them back over his face. “Looks like you got home fine anyway.” 

“Are you okay?” Kihyun’s voice sounds so concerned. It makes Yoongi feel awful - for snapping, for leaving him last night. He peeks over the edge of his covers. Kihyun is frowning at him.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Yoongi sighs, “just felt sick last night. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Kihyun replies. He face breaks into a sly smile and he settles himself further onto Yoongi’s bed. “Actually, it’s more than okay. Guess who drove me home last night?”

“Oh god, it wasn’t -”

“Hoseok? It totally was,” Kihyun sounds down right giddy, “I didn’t even have to ask! He just offered when he noticed you had left.” 

“What a gentleman,” Yoongi huffs. 

“And, okay, I’m not done,” Kihyun continues. Yoongi watches him bite his lip. “So halfway home he puts his hand on my knee and I’m like thinking - fuck, holy shit, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ \- because I have no idea where this is going or what I’m going to do.” Yoongi really wishes he had been able to at least have breakfast before he had to hear this story. “And then we get to my place and he’s like,” Kihyun puts on a voice, a sad imitation of Hoseok, “Kihyun, you look cold, do you want my sweater? And I’m not an idiot, so of course I said yes,” 

“Of course,” 

“And he tells me that he sees me at the pool all the time and then he says I’m _cute_. He really said that! And at this point I’m about to shit out my lungs and then he, oh my god, Yoongi,” Yoongi knows what’s coming next before Kihyun even says it, “he kisses me and then he asks me on a date. So now we’re going to the movies tomorrow and -” 

Kihyun keeps talking but Yoongi tunes him out. He listens to the birds chirp outside his open bedroom window and wonders how Shin Hoseok managed to do what Yoongi’s wanted to do for years in a matter of hours.

 

 

**15.**

Yoongi spends the rest of the summer playing second fiddle to Hoseok, spends the summer sitting in the back seat while Hoseok and Kihyun hold hands in the front. And he supposes it could be worse, Kihyun could be ignoring him completely, but maybe in some ways that would be easier.

Every time Hoseok kisses Kihyun in view of Yoongi he hates him a little more. Which isn’t fair because Hoseok isn’t a bad person. He’s funny and he’s nice and he treats Kihyun well and everyone likes him.

But Yoongi doesn’t. Yoongi hates him. 

 

 

**16.**

Senior year passes them by like the wind on the highway and before they know it they’re dressed in caps and gowns and being handed diplomas. 

“What are you going to do now, Yoongi?” The stars twinkle above Kihyun, reflected in the darkness of his eyes. It’s midnight the night of graduation, they’re sitting under that tree Yoongi remembers so well. 

Truth is Yoongi wants to go to Seoul. He’s spent these last few years feeling too big for this little town, for his house in the suburbs with the schools and the parks and the community pools. If things had been different maybe Kihyun could have kept Yoongi here. Things aren’t different, though, and so Yoongi is thinking of going to Seoul.

“Don’t know,” Yoongi shrugs, mumbling. The moon looks so far away tonight. “What about you?”

“I think I might stay here,” Kihyun bites his lip, leaning against the tree and angling his face towards the sky. The moon looks so far away but it lights up every curve of Kihyun’s face. “To be with Hoseok, you know?”

In that moment, despite Kihyun being right next to him, Yoongi feels farther from him then the moon. Or maybe Kihyun is the moon with Yoongi doomed to be trapped far beneath him.

 

 

**17.**

“Will you come to this party with me?” Kihyun asks, curling his bare feet against the carpet on Yoongi’s doorstep. He never did learn to love shoes. 

“Is it one of Hoseok’s college parties?” Yoongi asks. Somewhere out on his front yard, a cricket chirps. 

“Yes,” Kihyun replies carefully. He knows Yoongi never likes going to the college parties Hoseok invites them too. Yoongi doesn’t know anybody at those things, not even Hoseok’s friends that Kihyun has come to know by proxy. Yoongi tells Kihyun as much again this time and Kihyun simply whines a reply of, “you’ll know me. Please, Yoongi,” Kihyun bats his eyelashes.

 

 

**18.**

That’s how Yoongi ends up here, isn’t it? That’s not surprising. Kihyun bats his eyelashes and Yoongi says okay and now he’s at this stupid fucking party, Kihyun nowhere to be found.

Yoongi sighs. He’s sat on an ugly, creaking couch in the living with half a red cup full of keg beer. He’s declined at least three offers to go out into the backyard and get high but At this rate, boredom and annoyance on the steady climb, Yoongi might say yes if another person asks. 

“Hey,” a voice says, seemingly directed a Yoongi. Yoongi lifts his head to try and find the person and sees someone push their way through the crowd to reach him. “You’re Hoseok’s boyfriends friend, right?” Yoongi muffles a groan into the lip of his cup, nodding. The stranger takes a spot next to Yoongi on the couch. The whole thing dips with his weight. “Cool, hey, I’m Namjoon. We’ve never met properly but I’ve seen you around a few times.”

It becomes increasingly obvious to Yoongi that this guy is trying to hit on him. He tries his best to make friendly conversation, but if Yoongi said he wasn’t interested that would be an understatement. 

Yoongi throws his head back and with it the rest of the beer in his cup and asks, “Hey, Namjoon, have you seen Kihyun?” Yoongi hears himself slurring, registers the buzz of his blood just after. Maybe he had drank more cups of keg beer then he had realized.

“Oh, uh,” Namjoon scratches the back of his neck, “I think I saw him upstairs but he was with Hoseok so I don’t know if you want too -”

Yoongi ignores him. “Hold this,” Yoongi says, handing Namjoon his empty plastic cup. He stands then turns back and, to keep Namjoon from following, says, “stay here, I’ll be right back.” 

 

 

**19.**

The room is dark and Yoongi is half-drunk and he can barely see anything - but there's a feeling in his gut and a voice in his head he shouldn’t be looking anyway. The door is barely cracked and the people inside are whispering and it doesn’t get much more obvious that they don’t want to be found.

But it’s Kihyun, Yoongi can tell, he can hear his voice. That’s why he’s at this door to begin with, he climbed the stairs and heard the faint notes of Kihyun’s voice and they lead him here.

The room comes into focus, Yoongi stops swaying a little and his eyes adjust and he can make out shapes. There’s Kihyun, Yoongi knew it, and he’s lying on the bed. Yoongi doesn’t know who’s bed. Yoongi doesn’t even know who’s house this is. 

A figure looms above Kihyun and then Kihyun kisses the black shadowed figure and Yoongi realizes it must be Hoseok, legs bracketing Kihyun’s hips. Yoongi can only see the back of Hoseok’s head. Kihyun faces the door at an angle. This is dangerous, so, so dangerous.

Only Kihyun isn’t looking at the door, or at Yoongi, he’s letting his head fall back against the pillow as Hoseok lifts his shirt around his armpits and starts to kiss down his chest. Yoongi thinks he spots a dark-coloured hickey above Kihyun’s left pectoral but in this darkness he can’t be sure.

Hoseok kisses just above Kihyun’s belly button and this, this is when Yoongi notices Hoseok’s fingers have been working at unfastening Kihyun’s jeans. The one he made Yoongi help pick out and Yoongi said, the darker wash and Kihyun had listened and now Hoseok is sliding them down Kihyun’s thigh.

Yoongi gulps. He wants to look away, knows he should, knows he should want to look away, but he can’t. He can’t move an inch. He doesn’t want to. 

It happens so fast: Hoseok takes Kihyun’s dick out of his boxers and then he puts his mouth on it and Kihyun is arching off the bed, back pulled taut, and melting further into the pillow his head rests on. 

They must have done this before. They look too practiced, too aware of where to push and pull each other to have the desired results. Kihyun moans and it’s beautiful and Yoongi imagines, in that moment, what would happen if Kihyun opened his eyes and found Yoongi at the door.

Would they lock eyes? Would Kihyun look at Yoongi and bite his lip and slide his hand into Hoseok’s hair and fuck his mouth while Yoongi watched him? Would he groan and mewl and arch more, just for Yoongi. Hoseok would be the one with his mouth on Kihyun’s dick but the show would for Yoongi, quiet in the doorway while he watches the way Kihyun’s hair fans across his face. 

But Kihyun doesn’t look up, he doesn’t notice Yoongi. He grips the sheets on the bed until his knuckles go white, he lets out a breathy, “Hoseok,” 

Something about the word, just the two syllables, they slice through Yoongi’s haze. Suddenly, he realizes where he is, what he’s doing. He listens to Kihyun moan at Hoseok’s mouth on his cock.

Yoongi is out the front door as fast as he can manage. He’ll walk the twenty minutes home, it’s fine, it’ll give him a chance to clear his head.

 

 

**20.**

Yoongi doesn’t speak to Kihyun for two weeks. It is the summer Yoongi is eighteen and he goes the longest he’s ever gone without the speaking to Kihyun since they first became friends. Yoongi doesn’t remember that. He has no frame of reference for these two weeks. 

They pass in a crawl. Yoongi tries not to wonder why Kihyun doesn’t text him or call him or pad barefoot across the street and walk straight through his front door, like he’s done so many times before. Yoongi tries not to wonder. 

Instead, he looks for apartments in Seoul. 

 

 

**21.**

Another two weeks pass. Kihyun does not make efforts to speak to Yoongi and Yoongi makes no efforts in return. Yoongi knows all the reasons why he stays quiet but he has no idea why Kihyun does the same. 

It’s been nearly a month when his bedroom door opening at 2AM wakes Yoongi one night. His parents are gone for the weekend so, at first, Yoongi is startled. He sits upright in bed, light from the hallway casting a glow around the person in his doorway, making it impossible for Yoongi to see them properly.

“Hey, hey,” it’s Kihyun, his smooth voice, “it’s just me.” Yoongi catches a slur to his words. He’s been drinking. 

“What are you doing here?” Yoongi asks, relaxing in his bed once again. He rubs the sleeps from his eyes. When he vision focuses again, Kihyun is inside his room, right at the foot of his bed.

“You haven’t talked me in a month.” Kihyun replies. He sounds sad, it sends a crack through the foundation of Yoongi’s heart. 

“You haven’t talked to me either.” Yoongi counters watching as Kihyun climbs onto his bed. He’s not wearing shoes. 

“I’m sorry,” Kihyun is close enough for Yoongi to properly see his face now. He’s wearing the hoodie Hoseok gave him that night he first asked him out and his eyes are red, puffy, wet-looking. “Hoseok broke up with me.” 

“Oh,” For all those times Yoongi wished for this, the hurt look on Kihyun’s face was never worth it, it turns out. “Oh, I’m sorry. Why - why did he do that?”

Kihyun lays down beside Yoongi, sliding underneath his covers. He tugs at the sleeve of Yoongi’s pajama shirt, willing him to lay back down beside him. “He said,” Kihyun hiccups, “he said I’m not as invested in our relationship as he is. He said it should be equal on both sides.” 

Yoongi doesn’t know to say. Kihyun is crying again, he must have been crying before, and Yoongi feels just as helpless as he did that summer Kihyun broke his leg. He tugs Kihyun a little closer, puts an arm over his hip, let's Kihyun bunch his shirt up in a fist. Kihyun quiets not long after. Yoongi opens his mouth to say something but before he can even make a sound, Kihyun is sealing his open mouth over Yoongi’s.

Kissing Kihyun is like kissing wildfire: it burns, every inhale hurts because it feels like inhaling smoke. Yoongi doesn’t know how to breathe and he doesn’t know how to feel anything but heat. Not the heat from the summer, a different kind of a heat, a heat that starts inwards. One that spreads outwards from the inside.

Kissing Kihyun is like everything Yoongi has ever wanted turning to ash on his tongue. 

But it’s still everything Yoongi has ever wanted, so he doesn’t know how to stop. Kihyun slips his tongue past Yoongi’s teeth and Yoongi lets him. He’s followed Kihyun anywhere his whole life and this hurts, sure it does, but so did walking across the pavement barefoot in the summer. And he did that for Kihyun all the time didn’t he. 

Kihyun moves his hands upwards to grips Yoongi’s collar. Yoongi wraps a hand around each of Kihyun’s wrists and tries to pry him away. “Stop,” he mumbles against Kihyun’s mouth.

“Why?” Kihyun asks, barely far enough away to speak, “you love me don’t you.” 

Yoongi reels back, “what?” 

Kihyun doesn’t look Yoongi in the eyes. He keeps trying to tug him close again to keep kissing him. “You love me, you’ve loved me since we were kids, why don’t you want to kiss me?” 

_I do want to kiss you. I want to kiss you so much. There hasn’t been a day since we were fifteen where I didn’t want to kiss you. Why didn’t you notice before this?_

Kihyun manages to press another kiss to Yoongi’s mouth. Yoongi doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to stop. Without thinking, he blurts, “I’m moving to Seoul,” 

Kihyun stills, “oh.” 

Yoongi finally manages to pry Kihyun’s hands away from his shirt. “I’m sorry.” 

 

 

**22.**

Yoongi wonders when Kihyun realized Yoongi was in love with him.

It doesn’t matter now, he thinks, watching the porch light of Kihyun’s house switch off as Kihyun disappears behind his front door.

 

 

**23.**

Yoongi moves to Seoul one of the last days of August. One of those days when the tendrils of autumn start to hook themselves into the air and make it a little colder. A breeze runs through the air that makes Yoongi shiver, clouds roll in from the west. 

Kihyun does not come to say goodbye.

 

 

**24.**

Yoongi’s father cuts down the tree in the front yard. 

It had been dead for years anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> hope none of y'all don't expect happy endings from me anymore


End file.
